I enjoyed *Red Storm Rising *for what it was, a Clancy novel, but something he was criticized for was while he could write about technical matters fairly well, he fell down when it came to writing convincing ground warfare. IIRC, the deepest Soviet advance in the book was to the outskirts of Luneburg, not even 20km from the inter-German border.
Another book from that era that was sort of an anti-Tom Clancy novel was Red Army by Ralph Peters. It’s written entirely from the prospective of the Soviet side with well developed sympathetic characters, and NATO loses. Like a lot of books in the genre however, nuclear war is avoided.
It’s been 20+ years since I read Red Storm but as I recall the Soviets weren’t out to conquer & occupy Western Europe so much as to eliminate or at least cripple NATO long enough to achieve their real objective: To invade & conquer the Middle East and get the oil fields (an Islamic terrorist had previously destroyed a major Soviet petroleum facility). Something I feel Clancy got right is that the USSR totally underestimates the effectiveness of our stealth fighters in halting & decimating their massive armored ground forces (as we did in Gulf War I). Interestingly the stealth fighters are referred to as “Frisbees” because back then they thought they’d be more saucer-shaped.
I not only read the book but later also listened to the (abridged) audio book version read by F. Murray Abraham which is pretty good if you’re in a hurry (think iTunes has it)…
Red Storm Rising posits a situation where the Soviets do not achieve strategic surprise. It is a major point of conflict amongst the Soviet characters; the guy who end up being the supreme commander in Europe argues, forcefully, for an immediate attack from existing positions to achieve surprise. He is outvoted, and the Soviets instead spend some time preparing better attack positions and various little tricks, but NATO is alerted, and makes defensive arrangements. That’s the backbone of Clancy’s story having the Soviet attack fail; they run into the meat grinder of an enemy that for the most part knew they were coming. (Some aspects of the Soviet attack, like the invasion of Iceland, are not anticipated, but the main thrust is.)
By contrast, Ralph Peters’ novel Red Army posits a Soviet victory achieved through strategic surprise. NATO is caught unawares and cannot successfully coordinate itself for several critical days, at which point West Germany sues for peace. True NATO firepower is never effectively brought to bear.
This is fairly consistent with military reality going back, oh, to the American Civil War, anyway. Large scale offensives require strategic surprise; a prepared defense will blunt any attack. Even in cases where the defender was aware an attack was coming strategic surprise could be achieved through misdirection, as was the case in the summer 1944 offensives; the Germans knew they would be attacked but were deceived as to where.
I use the U.S. Civil War as an example deliberately; the was was characterized by many attacks that failed or fizzled out because they came as no surprise to the defenders. In rare occasions where they did, such as Grant’s totally unorthodox end run around Vicksburg, the defenders were confused and disorganized and succumbed to symptoms of organizational shock.